We have a pond that is losing water from the sides at the top. Do you think that the bentonite that you used in the bottom of your pond will work? Do you know where I can buy this in the big bags like you show in your pictures.
Do you know of anything that we can do to get this from losing water.
Thank you for your help

Response:

Hello Randy,

We used Bentonite on the bottom and the sides. We used more on the bottom because the water pressure is higher the deeper the pond is.

Check with a local well drilling service they use drilling mud, which is bentonite. If they won't sell their stock they can point you in the right direction. We live near Houston so finding a supplier for Benseal was pretty easy.

You can also buy it buy the truck load from Texas Sodium Bentonite but be aware that the Bentonite mined here in Texas is not as concentrated as that mined in Wyoming that is used in the 50 pound bags in Benseal.

We have good sized runnoff pond but every summer when the water table drops, the pond dries up. Then when the October rains come, the pond fills up (This week it happened VERY quickly!)

Response:

Hello Alice,

I am glad you made it through the great floods of the north! Was Noah loading animals 2 by 2? I can joke a little because we get a lot of rain down here often.

As you probably read on the pond pages we had a similar problem with our pond. It would fill up and then go dry. It sounds like ours went dry quicker than yours though.

I have a line from my well hooked up to the PVC pipe. I have sprinkler system water valve with a timer that adds water to the pond automatically. If it rains and the level gets to full, I just turn it off. It fills at night so we don't notice the drop in pressure.

A couple of words of caution. Make sure if you hook into any drinking water source you have an anti-siphon valve in the line to keep pond water from backing into your well. As you will notice I also have the PVC pipe above the pond, so even if the anti-siphon valve fails it will not back into the well.

One more quick caution. Make sure your well pump (if you have one) is rated to run for long periods of time. Ours is a submerged pump, and it is rated for continuous use.

Hope this helps,

George Stevens
Pond Questions, The "Ask
George" Files
From Paul:

Hi I'm interested in obtaining sodium bentonite to seal my pond where did you obtain it in your sealing pond pics? i cant make out the company on the red bags.

Response:
Hello Paul,

Below are a couple of links to Bentonite suppliers. Bentonite is primarily used for well drilling, as a drilling lubricant and sealer for wells. You can search in your local area for well suppliers that provide drilling fluids and supplies. I called local well drillers and found the local supplier for Benseal. They supply bentonite in 50 pound sacks. This was better for my application.

Shipping is a big expense so finding a local supplier saved me 40%. One more distinction is all bentonite is not created equally. The first link below is to Texas Sodium Bentonite. They mine the bentonite here in Texas about 250 miles from my property. At first blush it would seem they would be the obvious choice because Benseal (the second link) gets their bentonite from a mine in Wyoming, but that is not the case. The bentonite from the Texas mine requires 30% more bentonite by weight to achieve a good seal. So I selected Benseal because it took less and they had a local distributor that delivered it to my property.

Hope this helps,

George Stevens
Pond Questions, The "Ask
George" Files From Brad:

Will Bentonite work on sealing a pond if it has water in it? I
think the leak is on the damn. Maybe from an old tree root. It is also full of
fish.

Response:

Hello Brad,

I have not used it for that application. I think you would have to get it to
the region of the leak for it to work. Since it is a dried clay granule it would
float if you put it on top of the water. Once it soaked up the water it would
sink and then go to the bottom. I am not sure if it would go to the leak site in
a quantity great enough to stop the leak.

Is there any way you could drain the pond down to the spot that is leaking
and treat it with bentonite? If so it might seal it up.

Hope this helps,

George

Pond Questions, The "Ask
George" Files
From Bonnie:

Hi George....... We are looking at some to build our dream
home on it's 33 acres and it's farm land they said that the land is very good to
grow corn on because it is wet land. He also said that there is three different
places that hold water if it rains alot. Land is very high where we at at. The
33 acres is afford for us and my dream is to have a rescue for horses, dogs, cat
whatever. Also I want a walkout basement with my dream house but because of the
wet land there I don't know ,can you help as in some advise .and is a pond a
good idea to help with the standing water.

Response:

Hello Bonnie,

I know very little about
basements. We can't have them here because the water table is so high that it be
a swimming pool.

What I did with my
property is I walked it after a really heavy rain and looked for the low spots.
That told me how it drained naturally. I only have a couple of acres so this may
not work very well for you. A survey of the property could identify the low
spots and give you a good idea where to put a pond.